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It is a given that life is going to end in death. There is
no other conclusion, no other end, no other answer possible to the eternal
question of life but death. It takes magnificent madness or immense intelligence
to invent happiness into an otherwise bleak undertaking, which invariably ends
in dying. We are therefore so charmed by the stories which restore our faith in
this ever-so doomed journey of life. The Great Gatsby is a mix of both- the
madness and the intelligence. This is a rare book which doesn’t need a review but which
one cannot stop analyzing and raving about. It is such an amazing work that one
doesn’t even want to credit the writer about it. Such brilliant art is nothing
if not an accident of nature. The writer is a mere conduit of an idea whose
time has come. But then, that is very unjust to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The writer
stands in stark contrast to his compatriot and sometimes friend Ernest
Hemingway. While Hemingway had a stark writing where every word made space …

We grow up romanticizing a near-crazy image of creativity. I call it an image because it is nothing but that- an image, unreal, untrue, fantastical. No creativity can survive indiscipline. We grow up imagining writers to be people oblivious to any idea of discipline- eternal rebel, lost in their own world, not to be bothered about the world in which normal beings live. Unkempt in appearance, untidy in living and uncouth in behavior. That belief is absurd and is propagated largely by people who are either not writers themselves or have not had met the real writers. Most art requires some basic training and that basic training brings in some amount of discipline, some pattern to their practice. Writing doesn't usually requires such training. Writing is all based on self-discipline. It doesn't require a specific training to be a writer, though I would tend to believe that trained writer can produce quality work with much ease than untrained ones. If you can speak, have something …